Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for North Sydney for her amendments and for the constructive way that we've been able to discuss them. The government won't be supporting these two amendments. The reason that we won't be supporting the first amendment, which relates to delaying the commencement of the nature repair market, is similar to the reasons I gave the member for Clark. We're not proposing to open the doors for business to have projects out there immediately, but we need the legislation to pass so that we can begin to employ staff, employ the specialists we need, begin to develop methodologies and establish the database and the capacity we need to monitor the projects once they're up and running. We need the legislation to pass so that we can allow the Clean Energy Regulator to grow the part of their organisation they need to regulate a whole new market. That's why I don't want to delay the commencement of the bill. But what I will say is that clause 11(2) prevents the Clean Energy Regulator opening its doors for project applications until a date set by the minister by legislative instrument. That is the opportunity I will have to say that we're not opening it until these things are all in place. So it's in there, in clause 11(2), and that will be at least 12 months after the legislation passes, while we put in place all of those measures that I've described.

On the objects of the bill including responding to climate change, I completely understand why the member for North Sydney is raising climate change. Obviously one of the biggest threats to nature, to biodiversity, is the impact of climate change—no question about that. As the member for North Sydney said, we've got the safeguard mechanism, along with our legislated pathway to net zero, the ozone bill that I passed, the methane pledge, the 82 per cent renewable energy and the vehicle emissions work we're doing. There are a bunch of things that the government is doing in relation to climate change. This is specifically about biodiversity, which is of course impacted by climate change, but there are projects that can have a really positive impact on biodiversity without having a particular impact on carbon emissions. One of the best examples would be projects that deal with feral or invasive species. If we get rid of cats from a national park, there is a huge biodiversity benefit and no real carbon benefit. So we need to give ourselves the flexibility to have projects that are just specifically about biodiversity. I will give another example of where biodiversity becomes important. We're going to be planting more trees—it's one of the most important things we can do to generate carbon credit units to deal with climate change. But any tree has a carbon benefit; if you also want a biodiversity benefit, you will be more selective about the types of trees that you plant, and you'll want trees that are also food sources or habitat for particular species. I'm very aware of the impact that climate change is having in relation to biodiversity. I respect the member's putting on the record that these two things are very closely linked, but the reason I don't want to put climate change into the objectives of the act is to give projects that are great environmental projects but don't have a carbon benefit the chance also to prosper.

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